Booting off a server

[Cluster]

I want to setup a server so that i can have diskless machines boot off of it. Here's a couple questions I'm looking for.

1) What OS does the server need. (It's got win2kpro now, do i need server? Would i be better with *nix?)
2) How do i get the diskless machines to boot from the server. What do i need to setup on the server, and do i need special hardware so that the diskless machines know where to boot from?

If you know anywhere that has a good tutorial on this, or a networking book, that'd be awesome.

 

[Kingslayer]

You can do it with 2000 Server but it's not totally diskless. You'll still need a hard drive. But the information on it is pretty skimpy. They don't even tell you much about it in the MCSE course.

Only thing that I can remember is that you'll need minumum 64meg of memory in the server per machine you plan on running off it. That's the only thing that I retained from that section.

 

[fade2black]

Why not use Citrix? Metaframe 1.8 will run on Win2K and then you can use thin clients that truely have no disks. I use this at work for ALL of my remote sites (13 of them) and it makes administration a piece of cake...especially when I can shadow a user and see what they are doing if they have problems. Or, since I have control of their desktop also, I can show them workarounds, etc.

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[Cluster]

for the Citrix Mainframe, how do i get the diskless machines to boot off it. Do i need to do something with the nic card?

 

[fade2black]

When you set up the thin clients you tell it where your citrix server is (IP address) and it runs everything from it. All of the processing is done on the server.

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